Featured Testimonial About Creighton University
Our strong interest in developing collaborative care will improve patient outcomes. We are poised for great success in bringing people together and collaborating with our health system partners.
Joan M. Lappe, PhD, RN, FAAN, MS’85, is an important figure within the College of Nursing.
On second thought, the word “important” does not fully do justice to defining Dr. Lappe’s work, advocacy, and research; “integral” might be a more apt description of her significance to the College of Nursing.
Dr. Lappe, who holds dual appointments in the College of Nursing and the Osteoporosis Research Center (within the School of Medicine), began mentoring faculty members when she joined the Creighton family in the mid-1980s. Over the course of her career, Dr. Lappe has earned more than $15 million in external funding from the National Institutes of Health and other sources.
An internationally accomplished researcher, Dr. Lappe was named associate dean of research in the College of Nursing in 2015, bringing leadership and focus to the entire nursing-research enterprise at Creighton.
“Having worked in both schools, I see so much opportunity for interprofessional research,” Dr. Lappe says. “But we need money to fund time for faculty members who are so committed to their teaching and service that they don’t have time to get started.”
An extramurally funded project, led by Meghan Potthoff, PhD, APRN-NP, is proving her right. The goal of the clinical program—a collaboration among CHI Health, the College of Nursing, the School of Medicine, the School of Pharmacy and Health Professions, and the Center for Interprofessional Practice, Education and Research— was to determine whether a holistic, all-in approach to care would improve patient outcomes. While the study and data are not yet finalized, the results are already showing success. In the patients treated at the Creighton University Medical Center collaborative care clinic, the number of emergency department visits has decreased, and disease management has improved.
“This project has been recognized by the National Center for Interprofessional Practice and Collaboration—which funded about 16 projects—and was selected as one of the five best, as far as outcomes,” Dr. Lappe says.
“Our strong interest in developing collaborative care will improve patient outcomes. Creighton is unique in that we house all the health professions—from nursing, medicine, pharmacy, physical and occupational therapy and dentistry, to social work and business—so we are poised for great success in bringing people together and collaborating with our health system partners.”
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Getting more faculty and students involved in research begins with the help of our alumni and friends. Philanthropic support is necessary to develop even more modern approaches to nursing and education. Through endowed chairs, research grants, and funding for our Center for Faculty Innovation, Research, and Education, private support will help the College of Nursing continue to move forward as one of the leading universities developing clinical care research. This support sparks innovation and novel ideas that, in turn, create larger opportunities to uncover funding and add new knowledge to the world.
